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| Amsterdam
lies on the banks of two bodies of water, the IJ bay and the Amstel
river. Founded in the late 12th century as a small fishing village
on the banks of the Amstel, it is now the largest city in the country
and its financial and cultural centre. As of 2005, the population
of the city proper is 742,950 the population of the greater Amsterdam
area is approximately one and a half million. Amsterdam has one of the largest historic city centres in Europe, dating largely from the 17th century, the Golden Age of the Netherlands, of which it was the focal point. At this time, a series of concentric, semi-circular canals were built around the older city centre, which still defines its layout and appearance today. Many fine houses and mansions are situated along the canals; most are lived in, others are now offices, and some are public buildings. Some of the narrow brick houses are gradually sinking because they are built on wooden piles to cope with the marshy subsoil. The city is noted for many outstanding museums, including the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, Rembrandt House Museum, the Anne Frank House, and its world-class symphony orchestra, the Concertgebouworkest, whose home base is the Concertgebouw. Notable are also its red-light district, de Wallen, and its numerous "coffee shops" selling cannabis. Although Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands, it is neither the capital of the province in which it is located, North Holland (which is Haarlem), the seat of government (which is The Hague). History Amsterdam was founded as a fishing village in the 13th century. According to legend Amsterdam was founded by two Frisian fishermen, who landed on the shores of the Amstel in a small boat with their dog. The damming of the river Amstel gave it its name. It was given city rights in 1300 or 1301. From the 14th century on, Amsterdam flourished, largely on the basis of trade with the cities of the Hanseatic League.The 16th century brought a rebellion by the Dutch against Philip II of Spain and his successors, escalating into the Eighty Years' War which ultimately led to Dutch independence. The Dutch Republic became known for its relative religious tolerance and Jews from Spain and Portugal, prosperous merchants from Antwerp (economic and religious refugees from the part of the Low Countries still controlled by Spain), Huguenots from France (persecuted for their religion) sought safety in Amsterdam. It was the rich, refined migrants from Flanders who set the tone (their Brabant dialects became the basis of standard written Dutch) and made Holland a mercantile power. The 17th century is considered Amsterdam's "Golden Age". In the early 17th century Amsterdam was the richest city in Europe. Ships sailed from Amsterdam to North America, Africa and present-day Indonesia and Brazil and formed the basis of a worldwide trading network. Amsterdam's merchants had the biggest share in the VOC and WIC. These companies acquired the overseas possessions which formed the seeds of the later Dutch colonies. Amsterdam was the most important point for the trans-shipment of goods in Europe and it was the leading financial centre of the world. Amsterdam's stock exchange was the first to trade continuously. The population grew from slightly over 10,000 around 1500 to 30,000 around 1570, 60,000 around 1600, 105,000 in 1622 and almost 200,000 around 1700 (a twenty fold increase in 200 years). Thereafter, the population did not change much for another century and a half. During the century before World War II it almost quadrupled to 800,000, but then remained fairly constant again to this day. The 18th and early 19th centuries saw a decline in Amsterdam's prosperity. The wars of the Dutch Republic with the United Kingdom and France took their toll on Amsterdam. During the Napoleonic Wars Amsterdam's fortunes reached their lowest point. However, with the establishment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815, things slowly began to improve. In Amsterdam new developments were started by people like Sarphati who found their inspiration in Paris.The end of the 19th century is sometimes called Amsterdam's second Golden Age. New museums, a train station, and the Concertgebouw were built. At this time the Industrial Revolution reached Amsterdam. The Amsterdam-Rhine Canal was dug to give Amsterdam a direct connection to the Rhine and the North Sea Canal to give the port a shorter connection to the North Sea. Both projects improved communication with the rest of Europe and the world dramatically. Shortly before the First World War the city began expanding and new suburbs were built. During World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral. Amsterdam suffered a food shortage and heating fuel became scarce. The shortages sparked riots in which several people were killed.Germany invaded the Netherlands in 10 May 1940, taking control of the country after five days of fighting. The Germans installed a Nazi civilian government in Amsterdam that cooperated in the persecution of Jews. More than 80,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps, of whom perhaps the most famous was a young German girl, Anne Frank. Only 5,000 Jews survived the war. In the last months of the war communication with the rest of the country broke down and food and fuel became scarce. Many inhabitants of the city had to travel to the countryside to collect food. Most of the trees in Amsterdam were cut down for fuel. Places of interest Van Gogh Museum :  The Van Gogh Museum houses the richest collection in the world of works by Vincent van Gogh. The collection comprises over 200 paintings, 500 sketches and 700 letters from the artist, as well as his collection of Japanese prints. There are also paintings by Gauguin, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec and other artists from Van Gogh's circle. The museum organises regular exhibitions highlighting new aspects of art at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. The original museum was designed by the celebrated Dutch Architect Gerrit Reitveld in 1973. The addition of a new wing in 1999 has expanded the area for changing exhibitions and was designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa, who is famous for the originality of the Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia. Her Royal Highness Queen Beatrix opened the extension on June 24, 1999. Rijksmuseum :  The Rijksmuseum - Museum of the State - of Amsterdam was founded on 1808 by Luis Bonaparte, within the cultural policy designed by Napoleón for the nations of its orbit like was Holland. Its objective era to reunite the regal and nobiliarias collections to put them to disposition of artistic education. In 1813 Bonaparte it fell, governing the Netherlands Guillermo I, who assumed the art initiative. Not in vain, the bourgeois, furniture and regal collecting was at your service of the day from the baroque time, due to the commercial character of the Dutch society. In the rooms of the first museum of Holland it was possible to be contemplated to the best Dutch painting selection of the world as well as sculptures and decorativas arts of inestimables beauty and value. In 1800 an initiative already arose to create a National Museum in Is It gathered part of the diverse bottoms of the Stadtholder - ruling prince - on the part of the businessman Alexander Gogel, collection had the charge of by the government and settling down hour of opening and prices - 30 cents the visitor and the 60 painters cotracks, offering itself a service of guide -. Luis Bonaparte settled down the gratuidad and designed the administrative structure of the institution, dividing in two heads the direction, an exclusively administrative and other artistic one. The policy of acquisitions gave to its fruits, being needed a new building that lodged the enormous amount of works that counted the museum, located in a first moment in several rooms of the Real Palace. A mansion of the called Kloveniersburgwal was chosen architectonic the Trippenhuis, adapted to its condition of museum. An exhaustive study of the collections was made, sending to other buildings the objects and linen cloths of smaller quality. In spite of this measurement the space continued being little, reason why it was decided to summon an aid for the construction of a building that welcomed in so important institution. Year 1862 ran and 21 projects, choosing themselves the one of P. J. H. Cuypers appeared, although it had to hope until 1875 for the beginning of works, having itself budgeted 100,000 extraordinary florins and yielding the City council a land of three hectares to raise the building. In July 13 of 1885 the building was inaugurated that at the moment welcomes the Rijksmuseum. It has rectangular plant with 135 meters in his greater side, arranging the structure around two symmetrical halls, occupied the center by the entrances. In those rooms it emphasizes Ronda of Rembrandt at night - attacked by a lunatic one which, at the end of 1975, it caused deep tears in his pictorial support - and numerous works of neerlandeses teachers - Vermeer, Hals, Ruysdael- next to a good painting collection of the Italian Quattrocento, the Renaissance and the Baroque one. Sota Building:  IThe starting point for the photographic and video work of Hala Elkoussy (b. 1974, Cairo) is the constant change in the relationship between people and their social environment. In this she focuses specifically on the city where she was born, Cairo, a metropolis that exemplifies all of the large urban conglomerates in North Africa and Eurasia when it comes to rapid modernisation and expansion. This Spring the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam is showing her project Peripheral, which was previously seen at the Istanbul Biennale in September, 2005. It is comprised of a video and a number of large landscape photographs. The video, Peripheral Stories, is an effervescent visual essay that takes the viewer along through the suburbs of Cairo, simultaneously illuminating them with testimonies from various residents of the city, texts from media reports, statistics and advertising messages of diverse sorts. During the 28 minutes of Peripheral Stories a picture slowly builds up of the contentious relation of the contemporary resident to the changing social values: frustration, compliance, alienation, acceptance, expectations and doubts about the future in a society that lures with a plethora of consumer goods and new housing complexes that sprout out all around the periphery of the Egyptian capital. Mai Abu ElDahab, co-curator of Manifesta 6, characterized Peripheral Stories as “exploring the complex and metamorphic relationship between the centre and the margin defined geographically, economically, socially and/or morally… The viewer undertakes a journey on a Cairene microbus, the physical embodiment of perpetual movement between inside and out, between the individual and the whole: an illustration of the simultaneous proximity and distance in which the two coexist. ”Compared to the dynamism of the video, the photographs Peripheral Landscapes are literally and figuratively an oasis of tranquillity. They capture examples of the construction on the periphery of the city under a luminous light. The serenity of the photographs brings them closer to the age-old building traditions and typologies of rural Egypt, such as forts, archaeological sites and oases, than one might at first expect. The photographs appeal to a multitude of visual languages and reveal Elkoussy’s way of combining different genres such as distanced documentary photography and nostalgic romanticism. “I am interested in how identity is constructed, transformed and expressed through the making, coding and consumption of an image within the parameters of a visual culture -- that is, at one and the same time, feeding off, assimilating, recycling and adapting Western popular and mass media imagery while it comes to terms with an inherited discouragement of figurative representation”, explains Elkoussy, who presently has a studio at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. “My practice attempts to coin a personal/public language that takes its cues from the codes of mainstream modes of visual expression, like advertising, and proceeds to push the boundaries of the “photographable” and the “photogenic”, as it breaks down and questions socially transfixed roles.”In addition to Peripheral, in Bureau Amsterdam she will also show a new piece which is currently in progress. The exhibition is accompanied by a SMBA newsletter featuring a textual contribution by Clare Davies, Associate Curator at the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo. |
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| At TRAVEL WORLD EUROPE, you can find qualified information about the cities of Europe, such as population, language, history, places of interest and many more. In addition, we provide information about air and train tickets, accomodations, car rental and phone rental. If you plan a trip to any place, or just want to get more information about Europe, TRAVEL WORLD EUROPE is your first destiny! |
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